Venture Funds Pour Into Operative And MediaTrust; More Real-Time Bidding Love; Facebook Rampaging

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

10 MILLION Dollars

Advertising business management company – including ad operations services – Operative announced a new round of funding to the tune of $10 million led by ORIX Venture Finance and a private investment firm according to PaidContent. PC’s David Kaplan writes, “Operative will also use the new capital to enhance its offerings to both supply side platforms (in other words, publishers) and demand side platforms (agency trading desks and their intermediaries).” Read more.

Surveying RTB, Exchanges

Lots of real-time bidding data floating about these days. Following up on AdMeld’s Forrester Consulting report on real-time bidding earlier in the month, Digiday has released a new Google-sponsored study ( Googler Neal Mohan’s interview with AdExchanger.com is here) using data gleaned from media buyers, sellers and “traders.” Read more. One of many stats: former Teracent exec and current Google head of buyer development for Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Chip Hall, “said in presenting the results at yesterday’s DIGIDAY:ONMEDIA show in Los Angeles. ‘More than 14 percent of media buyers control budgets of greater than $100 million and – on the revenue side – more than 15 percent of publishers report revenues of greater than $100 million.'” Full survey here (PowerPoint).

Securing Direct-To-Publisher

Ad network Specific Media appears to be working on an inventory strategy which gives them exclusive or top-of-the-stack access to display advertising placements on niche vertical sites. According to a release, High Gear Media (HGM) and AutoMedia are the latest additions and, “Based on the agreements, Specific Media becomes the only third-party content provider approved to place ads on remnant inventory throughout both publishers’ websites.” Read more.

3 MILLION Dollars

MediaTrust announced that it, too, has taken investment from the bulging pockets of the venture capital world as Ropart Asset Management Funds has dropped $3 million into MediaTrust’s bank account. The funds will be used to launch its “announced real-time performance-based advertising exchange, which is currently in beta testing,” according to PE Hub. Read more.

Akamai Trumpets Returns

Lest we forget that Akamai is in the media business, on the heels of eTail West, the company announced “that two Internet Retailer Top 500(1) companies, Jos. A. Bank and Geeks.com, have enjoyed high returns on ad spend as well as significant incremental increases in online transactions since leveraging Akamai’s Advertising Decision Solutions.” Read the release.

Facebook Kills Classmates.com, UOL Reports

Remember all those Classmates.com ads? Don’t expect to see them anymore as Classmates.com owner United Online has effectively mothballed the site and turned it into an archive appropriately titled MemoryLane. Facebook can assuredly lay claim to Classmates.com’s demise. Read the release. Meanwhile United Online reported Q4 2010 financial results and they were flat: “Consolidated revenues were $232.6 million, a decrease of 7% versus the year-ago quarter.” Read more.

Jack Griffin Bafflement

The Jack Griffin backstory and industry reaction isn’t letting up as AdWeek takes the temperature of media types in a piece by Lucia Moses. She writes, “One buyer said while Griffin’s firing won’t impact their investment in Time Inc.’s individual titles, the culture issues exposed by his exit don’t help the company’s image as it searches for a long-term strategy.” Read more!

Holding Hands, Semantically

Peer 39 and TRAFFIQ announced a partnership wherebyt Peer39’s semantic ad technology will be integrated into TRAFFIQ’s media buying platform as context continues to remain an important targeting parameter for media buyers. Read more.

No more FBML

On the Resolution Media blog, Aaron Friedman is looking forward to no more Facebook Markup Language (FBML) starting March 11. He writes, “Iframes mean that the content will be living on an external website. Since this is the case, in theory, we should be able to add tracking codes like Google Analytics or Omniture and get more data than we were able to before. This is a huge WIN in the integrating search and social realm.” What’s the ad impact? Not sure. Read the post.

The Google DSP

Google’s Inside AdWords blog has announced that optimization capabilities will now include conversions. Automatioin continues its refinement -are DSPs and ad networks scared? Lisa Shieh of the Inside AdWords crew delivers the news, “By providing another way to define the ‘best-performing’ ad, we hope to make it easier for you to experiment with your ads and learn which ones are the most successful in helping you reach your advertising goals.” Read more.

Changing The Meaning Of Like

“Urban Outfitters has Like buttons on every product in their website’s ecommerce store. (…) If the Urban Outfitters Facebook Page posted an updated about a new line of bikes it was carrying, only a small part of their audience would find it interesting, while a large portion of their audiences would find the update irrelevant or even spammy, leading them to click the Unlike button.” But now, things are different. Read more on Inside Facebook. Or, go right to the Facebook Developers blog.

Aol Re-Org

According to multiple sources and an internal memo published in the media, a re-organization of Aol’s management structure is underway post-Huffington Post acquisition. According to TechCrunch, David Eun will shortly be leaving AOL where he was “President of AOL Media and Studios he oversaw the AOL homepage as well as all of the content brands and sites.” Read the memo. And, read more in The Wall Street Journal.

New Website

DoublePositive has launched a new website that will give the makers of the Transformers movie a run for their money. See it here.

But Wait. There’s More!